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Mourn for Us. Mourn for the World
by Naomi Ragen
Ever since the decision to retreat from Gaza, I have felt that events were
rushing by at such a furious pace it was impossible to comprehend them. The
horror of forcible evacuations of Jews by Jews, the bulldozing of hundreds of
homes, the wholesale destruction of businesses and schools and community
centers. The busloads of homeless arriving in Jerusalem with only the clothes on
their backs, forced into hotel rooms with no refrigerators to hold bottles and
baby food. The frightening and strange parallels of human suffering and
homelessness across the seas by an act of God.
The idea that synagogues would be blown up, the decision to leave them followed
by the horror of Hamas-led destruction and wholesale burning of holy places. The
falling of two Kassam rockets within Israel (Sderot and Yad Mordechai) with no
Israeli response, despite our Defense Minister's toothless threat of "zero
tolerance" for any more Kassams. The knowledge that more Kassams will fall, and
our government will do nothing until it is too late, until small Jewish children
lie dead in the streets of Israel, as we experienced during the Intifada.
The Philadelphi corridor, that strip of land between Gaza and Egypt where so
many of our young soldiers died keeping terrorists from smuggling in more
weapons and bombs, suddenly turned over to Egyptians - (even though the
weapons-smuggling tunnels clearly exited into Egyptian army camps.) The complete
failure of the Egyptians to exert control of the border, allowing Palestinian
hordes from Gaza to overrun them....
The symbolism of 9/11 being the day that Israel let the terror groups take over
Gaza. How can I understand how America- who spoke so bravely of fighting terror,
of finding in anyone who supported terror an enemy of the United States-- is now
responsible for Israel's complete capitulation to terror?
In my mind's eye, I see what should have happened: The American support to
destroy Hamas. The destruction of terrorist camps all over Gaza. The
denunciation of the Palestinian Authority for being terror-supporters. The
support for the settlers in Gaza and the West Bank. Instead, this
incomprehensible policy of appeasement and capitulation. The British desire to
cancel Holocaust Memorial day to appease the Muslims.
History will show that the day Israel was forced by the United States and Europe
and her own misguided stupidity and blindness to give aid and succor to
terrorism, to leave her people vulnerable to terrorism, was the day the peace of
the world was destroyed.
I don't know how this is going to happen, but just as the feeding of Ethiopia
and Poland and Czechoslovakia to Hitler, bite by bite, only whet his appetite
and increased his hubris, so the burning of Jewish synagogues by the Hamas in
Gaza, the unprovoked rocket attacks that went unanswered by a brave and
competent army, incomprehensibly emasculated by weak and confused politicians,
will prove a turning point that all mankind will have reason to mourn.
I mourn now.
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